Snowflake Challenge: 12

[keiliss]

Day 12
In your own space, talk about what you think the future holds for fandom. What are your hopes and dreams for fandom? Do you have any predictions about what the next five years holds for fandom?

The future of fandom? I have no idea, and that's part of the fun. After nearly ten years of it, all I know for certain is things change, they grow, they morph into other things. People leave, come back, start writing My Little Pony fic and vanish off the local radar. The stories go on. The way they go on is a blend of what went before and new things like podfics and fan vids. Archives rise, grow, die when the owner walks off and lets spambots destroy it (Melethryn!!) Some stay constant though, and the old fics are still there if you look, right alongside the new ones.

Fashions change. There was a stage where my elf slash corner could more correctly have been called the Erestor/Glorfindel fandom (before that it was Aragorn/Legolas), featuring an OTP and a couple of other favourites like the twins or Haldir/anyone. Now - now there's more variety which is great and means no one needs to feel like an outcast or a non conformist, but I do get a sense there might be a stronger focus now on exploring ideas and writing skills than ‘Oh god, yes! I want ALL the Legolas!’. I do sort of miss the love and the silliness - yes, it's over there on Tumblr but I've found me and Tumblr aren't a good fit because I'd rather discuss than just read or send my thoughts out into a black hole. I think it’s good to know when something doesn’t work for you and leave it to the people it makes happy, so I let that option go.

I do like that fandom's become more respectable - I don't even blink when I tell someone I write fan fiction now. I like that there's no longer a sense it's just written by hormonal teenage girls or bored housewives. (and they have as much right to be creative and taken seriously as anyone else). I just worry sometimes that in the urge to become 'respectable' there's a risk the free spirit of the old Yahoo days will be lost, when people wrote stuff directly into the updater or wrote, read through once and posted in five different places and having a beta was purely optional and the writing was sometimes awful and the smut was often insert part A into slot B and went on for pages, but gods, people had so much fun!!! And in amongst the froth there were solid, meaty stories to follow, and things that could only be described as elven soap operas (I still tend that way a bit, it's what makes me smile). Eighty percent of what appeared could be scrolled past, but the other twenty percent was wonderful.

After experiencing that, I would be sad if the urge to become mainstream meant we ended up with a divide, with formal fandom on one side - respectable, organised, a bit regimented - and the fun and nonsense off somewhere else (Tumblr, what comes after Tumblr). I believe fandom needs a mix of the two existing cheek by jowl to really work. It needs the serious writers to create glorious fiction and set a standard to aim for and it also needs those out to write lots of smut or giggle about how cute X is to lighten things up and remind the serious writers it's also about fun and love and just playing in the sandpit and being a bit silly at times. There should always be space for people to write what they love in whatever way works for them ---- the grammar and fine phrasing will follow.

Finally, is the Tolkien fandom dying? No. It’s not a fraction as busy as it was five years ago, though remember the eighty and twenty percent I mentioned above? We seem mainly to have lost a chunk of the eighty percent, the good is still wonderful. Things are bubbling along right now for some reason, and I’m loving it, but I can’t see it being sustained. The movie people left and those who remained were the book people and those movie people who had grown to love the books. Book fandoms aren’t huge, they’re not buzzing and vastly busy, but unlike communities based around movies and tv, they don’t have a limited lifespan. We’ll be here in five years time, ten years time. Maybe we’ll all be writing Istari and Balrogs then, or it’ll all be Númenor, but it will still be here. I think we can stop worrying about its imminent death and just go along for the ride and enjoy it.

Good grief, that's a bit more than I thought I had to say.

Day 13

Comments

[engarian.livejournal.com]

I do tend to agree with you, although my platform is shorter than yours. Those of us who loved the books will always love the books. Those who came on board because of the movies and moved off into the larger world that the books offer will also be with us for a long time. Those whose only basis are the movies might pass on, but they also may come back after a few years and we will still be here to welcome them and ask how their journeys were between posts. I look forward to many years walking alongside you and following your torch.

- Erulisse (one L)

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

It's actually surprising the number of people who wander back after a few years, or who lurk for ages and one day need to find a fic or get in touch with someone and you realise they've been around the whole time. It's a pretty special place.

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about book fandoms and that it is the 20% who stick around.

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

Yes. Being part of a fandom in the middle of successful movie releases is one thing, there's no need for any serious commitment, but those of us who stayed do so out of love.

[spiced-wine.livejournal.com]

We’ll be here in five years time, ten years time. Maybe we’ll all be writing Istari and Balrogs then, or it’ll all be Númenor, but it will still be here. I think we can stop worrying about its imminent death and just go along for the ride and enjoy it.

Yes, I absolutely believe that. Tolkien is for the long-haul :)

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

They're hugely successful and popular books, so I don't see why interest would suddenly vanish. When you think of the strange things that chug along with healthy little fandoms, I don't think we have much to worry about.

[spiced-wine.livejournal.com]

They're hugely successful and popular books, so I don't see why interest would suddenly vanish.

No, I don't see why interest would ever wane. Those books will be popular in hundreds of years.

[chaotic-binky.livejournal.com]

We will be here until we are little old ladies simply because writing for this fandom is a passion for us 20% :)

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

We've made our own space, yes. Not going anywhere.

[scarlet1061.livejournal.com]

I completely agreed with everything you said.
I enjoyed *how* you expressed it.

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

Thanks *g*. It was meant to be only two or three paragraphs but I guess I've been thinking about this lately.

[ilye-elf.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I love fandom discussion. Looks like essay-writing is contagious ;-)

Fandom's come a long way since I read my first Aragorn/Legolas fic by accident some 11 years ago, and again in the last five years, as you've explained it perfectly here. I've got a feeling I've still only scratched the surface of who's doing what where, though. And also Tumblr happened, which is doing my head trying to understand it. What is the point?!

PS: Melethryn is still up in a weird cached format (http://web.archive.org/web/20080104160451/http://www.melethryn.net/index.html). One of the first things I stumbled across when I was poking around the fandom again. I think it's one of the only places my old fic is left on the internet now.

PPS: It will be a cold, cold day in hell before I read, write or touch Istari slash with a ten-foot bargepole. Just so ya know!

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

If you work out the point of Tumblr besides pictures and a place to put out opinions rather than discuss ideas, please explain.

The weird Melethryn way back thing IS BEFORE MY TIME. I'm not on the author list. So upset!!

How about dwarf slash? Balrogs?

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

and things that could only be described as elven soap operas (I still tend that way a bit, it's what makes me smile).

Me too - I've been writing it for about 500,000 words now :)

And we certainly need those people who go 'How sexy is XYZ?' as well as those writing serious angst about the kinslaying.

I think we can stop worrying about its imminent death and just go along for the ride and enjoy it.

Absolutely! You've said it perfectly.

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

I so want to start following your story, I must just be firm about making time to go start at the beginning and catch up. I don't know when time to read online became such an issue, and I resent it.

[minuial_nuwing]

Agree absolutely. I really do miss the craziness, the lighthearted feel of the early days, because it seems to go terribly serious for something done solely for entertainment now and then, but you are right - there is room for everyone and everything, and I really do believe that the 20% will be here for the foreseeable future.

I know I will be, even if I can't find time to answer emails right now. *g*

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

E-mail? What is this e-mail? (if you answer my email, then I have to add it to the list of emails I still haven't answered...)

(and then there are comment fics I haven't finished, and comment post I haven't returned to, and feedback still due)

A bit more lunacy would be fun, wouldn't it? But things change, reshape themselves and I guess this is where we are now. Need to manufacture some squeee of our own maybe?

[aliana1.livejournal.com]

Well said. I love both "respectable" writing and the craziness (says the girl who spent an hour last night dressing up like Silmarillion characters in her bedroom). Who says we can't have both? :D

That's what I like about book fandoms, too. Movies are fun, but books--and Tolkien's books, especially--have so much more meat to dig into, and I don't imagine will ever run out of things to write about, there.

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

Oh, I thought your photo shoot was an absolute hoot! Could use more of that *g*

It's easy to love a movie, explore it a bit and then move on, but books have so many corners to expand and play with - just a very different kind of love and not based in what's currently hot and happening.

[red-lasbelin.livejournal.com]

Fandom evolves, just as life does - which is one of the nice things and sometimes also one of the harder things. There's less general squeeing but there are people who still love as intensely as those outbursts, just express it differently. And I think there are more people who do engage with a beloved work more thoughtfully and really polish and let their work shine.

Another nice thing is that there is room for everybody. Not everyone was 'live and let live' as now (though there are still some awful fandom wars out there)

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

Yes, no more of a BNF and her minions laying down the law, or sudden, violent outbursts - I can remember a night when two people on my f-list were screaming at each other rather like neighbours hanging out the windows and swearing at one another across the street. Do not see these things any more and while it was an experience, life is a lot more comfortable without them.

And the love is real, yes. Not always expressed exactly the same way, but maybe a more thoughtful thing. It's still a good place to be.